Videos in my library won't play on Apple Music

Randomly, videos in my Apple music library will not play. These are all videos that have been downloaded from iTunes over the years. Also, other videos do play, so not all videos are impacted, but the videos that are impacted, will change.


When I do try to play them, I will just get a blank screen, as shown, below. If you linger on the bottom, you can see the status bar and you see the pause bars, so it looks like it's about to start playing, but it never will. If you press the pause bar, the play arrow will appear, then you can press the play arrow again and nothing will happen. It's just blank. Sometimes it will seem like they are trying to download and are stuck (for example, when closing music, I will get a message saying a download is in progress, or on certain screens, I will see the little spinning square/circle thing that you seen when an app is updating), but I can leave it for a long time and nothing happens.


I am not an Apple music subscriber, if that matters. And I use a 2015 MacBook pro laptop. I did just update to Monterey 12.1, but the problem recurs periodically even when I have not recently updated, so I don't think it's related to that.

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Jan 22, 2022 6:25 PM

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Posted on Jan 25, 2022 4:57 AM

Make a backup if you don't already have one. Delete an affected item from your library without deleting from your purchase history. You may get two or three confirmation prompts, delete from library, send to trash, delete from purchase history. Right-click the cloud version of the item that should remain and click Download. If the item disappears when you delete it close Music and reopen, it should come back as a cloud link. Obviously all this only applies to purchased items.


tt2

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 25, 2022 4:57 AM in response to Sonjastwin

Make a backup if you don't already have one. Delete an affected item from your library without deleting from your purchase history. You may get two or three confirmation prompts, delete from library, send to trash, delete from purchase history. Right-click the cloud version of the item that should remain and click Download. If the item disappears when you delete it close Music and reopen, it should come back as a cloud link. Obviously all this only applies to purchased items.


tt2

Jan 24, 2022 6:15 AM in response to Sonjastwin

Hi Sonjastwin,


It sounds like the Music App shows blank videos on your Mac. We're glad you've joined us in Apple Support Communities. Let's see if this helps.


It looks like you've had the chance to review Find answers and ask questions in Apple Support Communities. That's a great start, but we have some additional advice for you.


This sounds possibly network related. When this happens if you go to open a webpage in an app like Safari, does it open? How do you normally connect to the internet? Check out, Connect to the internet with your Mac for the methods in which you can connect a Mac to the internet.


If the issue remains, let's follow the steps in If an app on your Mac stops responding, closes unexpectedly, or won’t open. The troubleshooting in it will commonly fix issues of apps not working properly on your Mac. Since you mentioned updating already, you can skip steps three and four as they don't apply to your specific situation. 


If the issue remains, let us know if the issue resolves after a restart as outlined in step two. 


Best!

Jan 24, 2022 11:35 AM in response to ryane77

My laptop is connected to the internet via WiFi and I have done all the steps outlined in the last item except reinstalling the app and it didn't make a difference. From what I can tell, it's not possible to remove and reinstall Apple Music on a MacBook laptop. If that's incorrect, please link to instructions for how to do that without losing my music library and I will be happy to try it.

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Videos in my library won't play on Apple Music

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